Increasing strength

[johnny_old]

Im a 22 year old former wrestler, fairly lightweight. Since high school I have been lifting but i have only recently gotten serious with strength training after having heard and read about starting strength (a little late in the game). I've been pretty turned on to 5x5 workouts consisting of pretty much a rotation of squats, deadlifts, bench, press, and power cleans with other exercises on the side 3x per week.

For the past few weeks I have been able to gradually increase weight in all of these lifts but i can feel that im starting to hit a wall primarily with bench and deadlift. With deadlift im just losing grip even though I can get the weight up and the bar is a bit too big (30mm i believe) for me to effectively use hook grip and im slowing down fast with benching additional weight. What are some things i can do to keep improving, continuously bumping up weight, and breaking through these walls?

ive though about increasing sets, decreasing reps, or both, add additional sets of 1-3 reps with more weight, or maintain a certain weight for a certain number of work outs before increasing. Would any of those work or whats the best way to go about doing this?

[Michael Wolf]

Reading Starting Strength and following the program laid out therein, rather than "5x5 workouts consisting of pretty much a rotation of squats, deadlifts, bench, press, and power cleans with other exercises on the side 3x per week" would be a good start.

Regarding grip on the deadlifts: Use chalk, take a mixed grip. If those don't solve your problem, then you're going to need a place to train that has a proper barbell. Unless you have carney hands, you shouldn't need straps on your LP.